The Feminist Movement In The 1970's

The Feminist Movement was a series of campaigns for changes on issues such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, women's suffrage, sexual harassment and sexual violence all of which fall under the label of feminism and the feminist movement during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. The Purpose of the Women's Liberation Movement was to recognize a woman’s dignity and worth, and to enable women to enjoy equal rights with men in the workplace and to allow women to have more more control of their lives.

Before the 1960s women were expected to marry early and have children. They were not expected to go out and have jobs of their own and if they were, those jobs were “pink collar jobs” and they were not high paying

When it started out it was only available to married woman, but later on the availability was extended to unmarried women too. This pill gave women control of their destiny. Due to this form of contraceptive women could leave a sexually active life while having a successful career and now worry about falling pregnant and thus as a result lose their jobs. If employers were aware of the fact that a possible female employee was on the pill she had a better chance of being hired. The married women’s property rights were introduced in the early 1960s. It allowed women to be the legal owners of money they earned, and to inherit property. Before this act was introduced everything a woman owned or earned became her husband’s property when she married him. Amendments were made to the act and this allowed married women to keep half of any savings they made from the allowance paid to them by their husbands. This assured financial independence, but also made clear that women were still dependant on their husbands for their income. Once men and women married, they should never get divorced. Separation was not even allowed, even if they did not love each other. This made women’s positions more difficult. Women who were married had neither civil rights nor civil qualifications. Early divorce through parliamentary private bill was a rich man’s luxury. Later divorce was achieved by court decisions. The procedures were simplified and cost was reduced therefore poor men could also divorce. But during this time, women could not benefit from law because of the grounds of divorce had double standards between men and women. The divorce law was inclined to protect men’s right to divorce, it was hard for women to divorce. The Abortion Act was introduced in the UK, for women who were up to 24 weeks pregnant. However the abortion had to been done for the correct reasons such as it would be either be harmful to the woman’s mental or physical